Critical Theory

Rousseau, Mill, Hobbes

Terence Corcoran has written a piece on Critical Theory for the National Post.

I’m familiar enough with Critical Theory. Marcuse was a thing back in first year undergrad, and I watched it grow like fungus through grad school. I nearly smoked that mushroom myself. I’m currently working through it online with a doctoral student.

I say Corcoran doesn’t quite have a fix on it. He sees it as a rejection of the Enlightenment. That’s what Critical Theorists themselves say; but this is just the cover story.

Corcoran’s article illustrates “the Enlightenment” with pictures of Rousseau, Mill, and Hobbes. Rousseau believed civilization was on the whole a mistake; reason was a mistake. Mill was what we would today call a libertarian. Hobbes was a materialist who believed the only right the individual had against his government was to commit suicide.

Very different ideas. Some of which sound rather like Critical Theory. So what does it mean to “reject the Enlightenment,” or “reject Enlightenment ideals”?

The Enlightenment was not some unified movement, but just a time of questioning established ideas. All kinds of ideas emerged as a result. All of us have rejected some, and agree with some others.

Corcoran is right to see Marxism as a foundation of Critical Theory. But this explains nothing; it only raises questions. Marxism is not a virus: it cannot be caught by sitting in a class, it has to be chosen. Why does it command the schools, the universities, now the press and civil service, so many young minds, supposedly the best minds, and why is it still apparently growing?

Marxism ought to be thoroughly dead by now. All Marx’s predictions have turned out to be wrong. That was clear by 1917. Marxism should have been discredited again when Khrushchev publicly denounced Stalin. It should have been discredited when the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet bloc broke. Nazism has been utterly and forever discredited by the Holocaust: Marxism has produced larger holocausts, yet is not discredited?

It is also true, as Corcoran emphasizes, that Critical Theory condemns individualism, and promotes collectivism. Hence “race theory,” and the construction of an elaborate caste system under the term “intersectionality.” Hence too issues like cultural relativism and cultural appropriation.

But individualism is not a product of the Enlightenment. Individualism was always required by Christianity: the concept of free will requires it. The individual is the moral unit.

Merriam-Webster acknowledges this in defining the term. Individualism: “a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount.” “The conception that all values, rights, and duties originate in individuals.”

Individualism is not even a “western” thing. Buddhism and Taoism are radically individualistic. All true morality requires individualism. This is why the Devil is often understood as multiple: pandemonium; “My name is Legion.” The social power, in the New Testament, is in his control. 

The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.’”

This is the key that unlocks Critical Theory: it is all and simply a dodge to escape ethical demands.

Marxism is useful because it denies the existence of any objective morality. And it endorses sloth and envy. Freudianism, a second pillar of Critical Theory, is similarly useful because it denies the existence of objective morality, and endorses lust. Hence the emphasis on sex, LGBTQ and “gender” issues.

Put simply, “Critical Theory” is simply evil. It is the eternal temptation to behave badly.

It cannot end well.